Frank Watson

Frank Watson has been involved with the Web since it started. For the past five years, he headed SEM for FXCM -- at one time one of the top 25 spenders with AdWords. He has worked with most of the major analytics companies and pioneered the ability to tie online marketing with offline conversion.

He has now started his own marketing agency, Kangamurra Media. This new venture will keep him busy when he is not editing the Search Engine Watch forums, blogging at a number of authoritative sites, and developing some interesting online community sites.

He was one of the first 100 AdWords Professionals, a Yahoo and Overture Ambassador, and a member or mod of many of the industry forums. He is also on the Click Quality Council and has worked hard to diminish click fraud.

Articles by Frank Watson

One must-attend event during the SES San Francisco conference next week will be Search Bash. Those of us who have been to an SES conference before know it’s the place where some of the best networking gets done. Register now to avoid missing out!

The search marketing industry is losing one of its longest members, someone many may not know, but a person who has contributed to the success of what we all do. This is an open letter to thank her for making us all great.

Google is now including the ability to differentiate between regions that basically speak the same language but have slight differences (e.g., Mexican Spanish vs. Spain Spanish). Like the canonical tag, the implementation falls on website owners.

Google is looking to create a service that lets consumers shop for goods online and receive their orders within a day for a low fee. The move is a direct challenge to Amazon's Prime membership program that offers fast shipping for no extra charge.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement grabbed more than 130 sites this year, including counterfeit clothing sites and those that charged directly for services. Why is SOPA needed if the courts are issuing these warrants for website takedowns?

In a patent awarded this week, Google used the review/comments systems used by Amazon and Slashdot to support their method and gain approval for their "invention" that "provides an evaluation system for reliably evaluating large amounts of content."

The Silver Lake consortium - which includes Microsoft - has offered $16.60 per share for a minority stake in Yahoo, much lower than the $31 per share tender made in 2008. Bids are lower than what recent Yahoo investors must have been expecting.

How appropriate that in a month that a Google Doodle featured Halley's Comet that Google would follow up by celebrating Mark Twain's 176th birthday with a panoramic Doodle depicting one of the most famous characters he created, Tom Sawyer.

If you've received an email offering you access to the Google Wallet for Business beta recently, beware: it's a phishing attempt to get your credit card information. Matt Cutts confirmed the program doesn't exist and said to report it for phishing.

You may have received a pile of Groupon offers yesterday, but one sale the company did not want you to see was their stock 50 percent off their first day highs and well below the initial IPO price of $20. Why is the company's growth stalling?

The Silver Lake consortium, which includes Microsoft, is one of a number of parties bidding for a minority stake in Yahoo, but their offer has a number of factors that makes them a major contender – including a new CEO with a proven track record.

Today, Egyptians began voting in the first election since dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted. To mark the occasion, Google Egypt posted a Doodle with a design similar to logos Google has posted in other countries to draw attention to elections.

In what is the third installment of Google's "off-season spring cleaning series", more products are being terminated or integrated into other products. Aside from Knol, Google has killed Wave, Gears, Friend Connect, Timeline, and two more.

Ecommerce sites face their busiest days at the end of the week, so before we break for turkey, go through this basic Black Friday checklist – covering everything from social media, to PPC, to analytics, to promotions – to make sure you're ready.

Google has issued another algorithm Weather Report. While Google notes it is supposed to only affect less than 1 percent of searches, with 11.9 billion searches per month, this could potentially impact millions of results and thousands of sites.

An Australian doctor has brought a defamation suit against Google over Ripoff Report listings claiming she stalked psychics. She contacted Google to remove the listings - there are five listings at Ripoff Report - but the company refused.

With the demise of Yahoo Site Explorer, SEOs and online marketers are losing free access to the invaluable information it provided for 6 years. What can be done now? No free tool provides what YSE did, but here are some useful alternatives.

The battle between promoters of HTML5 and Flash is trying to coattail on the current popularity of the Occupy movement with two websites. OccupyFlash.org was the first site, then OccupyHTML.org was created - using a similar layout.

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin donated $500,000 to Wikipedia this week during the company's annual fundraiser. If you have been to Wikipedia this week you would have been hard pressed to avoid Founder Jimmy Wales personal plea.

Two adult entertainment companies have filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the operators of the .xxx top-level domain, and the administrator of the Domain Name System (DNS), alleging violations related to the controversial TLD.